Talks - We Know Not

We Know Not

We Know Not

Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami
, 2016-02-16

Naam ariyom: We do not know. The approach of our parampara: Not trying to explain the Truth but giving us concepts of God which help us get to the Truth. The intellect cannot experience God. The experience of God as Absolute Reality is even beyond the superconscious mind. "Nothing is everything." Dissolve into Nothingness, that's Parasiva.

Master Course, Dancing with Siva, Lesson 154

Unedited Transcript:

Good morning. Siva's recent lesson. Dancing with Siva, Sloka 154.

"Who Were Kadaitswami and Chellappan?

"Kadaitswami was a dynamic satguru who revived Saivism in Catholic-dominated Jaffna, Sri Lanka, in the 1800's. Chellappaswami was an ardent sage, ablaze with God consciousness, immersed in divine soliloquy.

"Bhashya

"Kadaitswami was a powerful Siddha, standing two meters tall, whose fiery marketplace talks converted thousands back to Saivism. It is said he was a high court judge who refused to confer the death penalty and renounced his career at middle age to become a sannyasin. Directed by his satguru to be a worker of miracles, he performed siddhis that are talked about to this day--turning iron to gold, drinking molten wax, disappearing and appearing elsewhere. Chellappaswami, initiated at age nineteen, lived alone in the teradi at Nallur temple. Absorbed in the inner Self, recognizing no duality, he uttered advaitic axioms in constant refrain: 'There is no intrinsic evil. It was all finished long ago. All that is, is Truth. We know not!' The Natchintanai says, 'Laughing, Chellappan roams in Nallur's precincts. Appearing like a man possessed, he scorns all outward show. Dark is his body; his only garment, rags. Now all my sins have gone, for he has burnt them up! Always repeating something softly to himself, he will impart the blessings of true life to anyone who ventures to come near him. And he has made a temple of my mind.' "

When we went to Jaffna, a year ago, went to the places that represent these two. Chellappaswami has a shrine right across the street from Nallur temple, and we went there, small shrine where And it's nicely preserved and after we went they got a bronze of him, was installed so we didn't get to see that. But when we were there there was an elderly man who sang beautiful Natchintanai songs for us and clearly the devotion to Chellappaswami survived the war which is nice to see. So Chellappaswami shrine is alive and well.

And then Kadaitswami has a samadhi temple. Years ago it was having a kumbhabhishekam when we were there on Innersearch. And Gurudeva climbed up this rickety ladder all the way up to the top. I'll never forget that and I was worried that the ladder was going to collapse on him. And then it has a nice, there's a strong vibration and there's a sense that Kadaitswami is attached to it. And it's a medium sized temple there with a Sivalinga and what they had added was a picture of Kadaitswami. There wasn't one there before but there was a picture of him on the wall there which we got a copy of. Very, I think he had matted hair there in the picture, looked very sadhuish.

Well the point is that, you know, the shrines for both of them are there and the tradition is still strong despite the war that went on; neither of those places was touched. In my habit I look at the "Words of Our Master" that sits the Yogaswami Shrine in the Guru Peedam every morning and this one was, couple days ago.

Yogaswami said:

"By tapas you can become free, (Sounds good, right?) but you can never know the Truth. It is beyond everything."

So it's a part of our Parampara is this approach to "Truth, you can't explain it." Instead of writing books about the Truth, describing it, describing it and describing it. We write one sentence to say: "You can't explain it." Saves paper.

I wrote some material on that for a class once. So I'll quote from that:

One of Chellappaswami's Mahavakiyam is: "Naam ariyom" which means: We do not know.

And here's the Yogaswami story on that.

"'Look at those trees. The trees are meditating. Meditation is silence. If you realize that you really know nothing then you would be truly meditating. Such truthfulness is the right soil for silence. Silence is meditation.'

"Yogaswami bent forward eagerly. 'You must be simple. You must be utterly naked in your consciousness. When you have reduced yourself to nothing - when your 'self' has disappeared - when you have become nothing then you yourself are God. The man who is nothing knows God for God is nothing. Nothing is everything. Because I am nothing, you see, because I am a beggar - I own everything. So nothing means everything. understand?"

Then the, the Sinhalese man, what's his name? Wikra? Remember his name? No. Something like Wikraasingham, asked a question:

"Tell us about this state of nothingness."

"It means that you genuinely desire nothing. It means that you can honestly say that you know nothing. It also means that you are not interested in doing anything about this state of nothingness."

"What, I speculated, did he mean by 'know nothing?'"

"You think you know but in fact you are ignorant. When you see that you know nothing about yourself then you are yourself God."

So it's a very interesting point.

"The most dominant point made has to do with nothingness and not knowing. In life, the normal emphasis is on acquiring knowledge, that is replacing a lack of knowledge on a subject with knowledge. For example, we purchase a new computer and know little about its operating system. Therefore, we need to read the manuals, talk to experts and end up acquiring enough knowledge to operate the computer. We have replaced a lack of intellectual knowledge on a subject with knowledge.

"However, Yogaswami's approach is the opposite. We start with intellectual knowledge about God and strive to rid ourselves of this knowledge. When we succeed we end up experiencing God. Why is this? It is because the intellect cannot experience God. The experience of God in His personal form and His all pervasive consciousness lies in the superconscious or intuitive mind. And the experience of God as Absolute Reality is even beyond the superconscious mind."

So it's an interesting approach of our Parampara. Not trying to explain the truth but giving us concepts about God which help us get to the Truth. But we need to have a loose weave as we would say in Hawaii. The concepts, the concepts themselves can be a barrier if we cling to them too tightly. They help us get to a certain place but then we have to let them go so that they aren't the experience. Otherwise instead of experiencing something, we're just experiencing our concepts of something. So there's a big difference.

Gurudeva in "The Self God" starts out: "The Self, you can't explain it." And then he goes on with a few hundred words but he doesn't really explain it. Said: "If you visualize above you nothing, below you nothing, to the right of you nothing, to the left of you nothing" and dissolve yourself into that nothingness, that's the best you can explain it.

So that idea of "nothingness" and not being able to explain is the key to the deeper experiences. An analogy I use for trying to understand Parasiva, the Self, is the shower head. Remember the shower head analogy? That you have a shower head and you have water coming from it. Now imagine the shower head is invisible. So there's water coming out of nothing, right? So then you take the water and turn it into actinic energy. So you imagine that, okay, you have actinic energy, superconscious energy, but it's coming out of nothing. So all you have to do is grab hold of that nothingness and that's Parasiva. So it's the invisible shower head. That's my analogy.

Have a great day.

Aum Namah Sivaya

In Category:

The mystic lives, and is taught to live, two-thirds within himself and only one-third in the external. In learning how to do this, the mystic is taught to become consciously conscious, or aware that he is aware.